FMX
You Have to See Tom Pages' All-New Front Flair
Tom Pages is pushing the limits of freestyle motocross to the next level with an insane new trick.
In the modern day of freestyle motocross, progression can sometimes be tough to keep moving. The sport has moved to levels beyond comprehension in the 21st century, and one of the men at the forefront of that movement is French freestyle ninja Tom Pagès. From bike flips, to flairs, to body varials, Pagès has kept the sport pushing forward at an impossible pace for the vast majority of the world.
Take a look at the video above for proof. Tom Pagès has done it yet again, this time with a front flair that moves body and bike in about 10 different directions in the span of about one second, putting the wheels down to dirt at his practice compound in France. Just 44 days ahead of the 2016 running of the Red Bull X-Fighters in Madrid, Pagès will yet again come in as an odds-on favorite on the shoulders of tricks like this, and many others that he is the only rider in the world doing.
Freestyle motocross is an incredibly unique sport, having fallen into something of a lull in popularity, partly as a result of its own elite athletes. It was not long ago that a backflip on a dirt bike was thought to be impossible. Then Carey Hart launched his bike into the stratosphere at the Gravity Games in 1999, and Pandora’s Box had burst open. Then a double backflip happened in 2006 at the hands of Travis Pastrana at the X-Games, and again, people speculated that the sport had hit the glass ceiling. Then, a triple, this time in 2015 from Josh Sheehan. The unfortunate pattern that a keen observer cannot help but notice is the quantification of the sport’s progression by number of times a rider has gone upside-down or the number of spins he is doing, not unlike the arms race that happened in recent years in snowboarding, with triple corks now competition standard and riders uploading quad cork videos to YouTube every week.
A sport like FMX is different in that it carries with it tremendous consequence in crashing, more so than any other freestyle action sport. There is no bailing in freestyle moto – land the trick, or get hurt. Thus, as the progression has moved on, more and more riders have fallen victim to their own survival instinct.
Take a look at a timeline of highlight tricks of the past 20 years, the riders who did them, and the number of riders to adopt the trick within the following three years:
1999 – Backflip
Rider: Carey Hart
Number of adopters within 3 years: 10+
2002 – Ramp-to-dirt backflip
Riders: Mike Metzger and Travis Pastrana (both landed the trick during practice sessions within about a week of one another)
Number of adopters within 3 years: 10+
2006 – Double Backflip
Rider: Travis Pastrana
Number of adopters within 3 years: ~5
2007 – Body Varial
Rider: Kyle Loza
Number of adopters within 3 years: ~3
2008 – Flair
Rider: Frederik Johansson
Number of adopters within 3 years: ~3
1 min
Red Bull X-Fighters Tricktionary - Special Flip
Red Bull X-Fighters Tricktionary - Special Flip
2012 – Special Flip
Rider: Tom Pagès
Number of adopters within 3 years: ~1
2014 – Bike Flip
Rider: Tom Pagès
Number of adopters within 2 years: 0
2015 – Alley-Oop Flair
Rider: Tom Pagès
Number of adopters within 1 year: 0
2015 – Triple Backflip
Rider: Josh Sheehan
Number of adopters within 1 year: 0
The proof is in the paint. The 99% of the world’s FMX professionals simply cannot keep up with the elite 1%. Riders like Tom Pagès, Josh Sheehan and Travis Pastrana have brought the sport to incredible, and apparently impossible heights.
